You're a Mustelid, My Dear!
by handschuhmaus
Summary: This is utter plotless crack, and might be considered a predecessor to "LUEftL!" Contains a petulant Voldy, a knitting Snape, McGonagall's almost-homicidal insanity, wannabe-Communist Sirius, confused Harry, and assorted other characters. Written in '08.


Disclaimer: I don't own 'em! (or some of the references made herein)

_**This was written back in...oh, 2008, and thus is not the best or most up-to-date sample of my writing. It is pure crack and utter insanity. Everyone is very OOC. McGonagall is INSANE (or as Voldie puts it, "inane"...), Voldemort is also very strange...clingy towards Snape, weepy, obsessed with intellectual property rights; Sirius is trying to be a Communist/revolutionary and going about it very strangely(this, though, was inspired by a Fiction Alley fic...I**_******think _the one where Remus, Sirius, and Severus are all employed by QuikSpell), Draco is afflicted with random and odd accents and an extremely strange "barracuda". Snape knits a lot. And manages to have a book that was published the same month as (I want to say perhaps a week before or after) Deathly Hollows. Lucius Malfoy is very bizarre-"you twitten!", Dumbledore has...issues (you'll see)...and, erm... Tonks, Eileen, and Tobias are all acting strangely as well._**

_**It is not likely to be continued. I am annotating it for your reading enjoyment...numbered "foot"notes coming from the original. It is complete, however, with off the wall references (as you will see, I went through a phase of being more into LOTR than I am now), misunderstandings, "punes, or plays on words", as Sgt. Fred Colon would say in a Discworld Watch Novel, and some things I'm not sure why I wrote.**_

_**You might say this is an early predecessor of "Let Us Escape From the Laundromat." This itself was preceded by a fic with a working title of "The Artemis Fowl Test", but because it is confusing, no longer as funny as I once found it, and unpostable to ffnet (mainly, it's written as a chatroom. But there are other verboten aspects to it), you will never see it. The very first part was begun in '07... I think because I wanted to write an extremely AU fic or something? Some of my reasoning is lost in the mists of time. I took it up again and wrote on it sporadically, I think after additional input of nonsense.**_

_**And, without further ado, I present... "You're a Mustelid, My Dear..."**_

Harry was baffled. Professor McGonagall kept disappearing, though she owned no invisibility cloak and was not using an invisibility charm. It wasn't just Professor McGonagall, however, that reappeared in front of him. It was Professor McGonagall, with Voldemort!

"What! Professor McGonagall?" Harry spluttered.

But she was paying absolutely no attention to him. Instead, she was whispering to Voldemort and stroking him.

"Professor McGonagall!" Harry yelled "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Oh, yes, I'm quite all right," she said, in a purr. "As long as my Voldie is with me."

"I told you not to call me that, Minerva. It's Vol_demort_." replied the object of her affection.

All of a sudden, the corridor was filled with rain. They found themselves standing in about five inches of water. Then, a pineapple fell from the ceiling. Then, Draco Malfoy came in.

"What isss he sstaring at, my preciouss?" the blonde boy asked.

"We must overthrow the bourgeoisie!" yelled someone that Harry did not expect to see.

"What are you talking about, Sirius?" Harry yelled back.

"We, the proletariat, must overthrow the bourgeoisie!" replied Sirius, who was waving a red flag.

"_Crucio!" _Professor McGonagall exclaimed, pointing her wand at Sirius.

Sirius collapsed with the Cruciatus curse, while still trying to wave his flag and say stuff about proletariat and bourgeois.

"What isss going on, my preciousss?" Draco Malfoy asked.

"_Stupefy!"_ said Voldemort. Draco fell over.

"But, but, what are you doing, Professor McGonagall?" Harry asked.

"WOULD YOU HOMICIDAL STOP THROWING MY SANGUINARY BOOKS MURDEROUS HALFWAY DOWN THE INFERNAL ANATHEMATIZED CORRIDOR?" Snape yelled. Apparently Winky was clutching a book and weeping over it.

"I DRATTED DIDN'T TELL YOU TO TAKE MY INSECURE BOOKS!" Snape yelled, and snatched the book from Winky.

"My precioussssssss" Draco moaned, in a tone like a deflating balloon.

"Take that, you idiot! And that, and that, and THAT!" Professor McGonagall yelled. "_Crucius!"_ She waved her wand erratically at Draco.

A large fish wearing a purplish wig and a puzzled expression and smelling of prunes and sauerkraut appeared on top of him. "Hello." it said in an unemotional voice. "I am... a barracuda. The barracuda of uneaten binder clips."

"Of **uneaten** _binder clips?_" Snape inquired, hugging his book tightly to his chest, as to protect it from the hands of kleptomaniac house elves.

"Yes." said the fish, which now seemed to look more like a bird "and of heels..." (it seemed to be slightly befuddled) "and of polymers and aldehydes in cinnamon and teflon respectively." It had a posh accent.

"All right... If that's what you say..." Snape said vaguely, and then, half to himself, "I wonder if you can get an Order of Dumble—oh, sorry, of you-don't-know-exactly-who for scoring an out-of-dye Koigu[1]?" He then seemed to notice Harry, and said in a very giggly voice which sounded out of place for him, said "Oh, hello, Potter. It's very nice to see you. How are you doing and all that rot?"

Harry blinked. Suddenly there was a flash of light and Snape was suddenly dressed in a mail shirt, a grey cloak, tights, bright orange socks, and a hat made of envelopes[2]. Music began to play.

"_His name is Snape-a-lot, and be-craped[_3]_a lot, he likes to escape-a-lot, you know you do!" _the music stopped completely for a moment and then began again. Sirius got up stiffly, still holding his sign, and began to dance as if he were a marionette. "_For when he starts to escape, just gape much at your drapes la-la-la-la..."_

Sirius spoke dreamily in a falsetto voice, "He can cappuccino go out and sow[4] that he R-B-U-G-A-S-N-U-G-R-N-U-N-W-Q-O-P-U-I-V-C-N-M-I-U-Y-T[5]!" And then his singing trailed off. "Did I just sing that?" he asked, returning to [semi-normal] consciousness.

"Muahahahahahahahahaha!" Minerva McGonagall laughed. Pointing her wand in vague directions like an evil fairy godmother, she began to dance around yelling "Crucio! Avada! Commodore! Ahoy! Arrr![6] Imperio! Crucio! Mudbloods! Avada! Avast, ye lobsters! Eat slugs!"

"I do believe you are a mustelid, my dear Minerva" Voldemort commented worriedly, and opened his mouth wide, and paused, and for some obscure reason took a deep breath. It was then that they all noticed that Snape was singing off key at the top of his lungs.

_1 for the uninitiated, Koigu is a hand-dyed sock yarn that isn't particularly overly difficult to obtain.*_

_2 I was reading Going Postal today. His clothes are supposed to be sort of like Legolas's plus a mail shirt and some orange socks like mine and the hat made of envelopes as a pun on mail._

_3 as in covered in a certain type of crinkly fabric_

_4 as in a female pig_

_5 "bug" "snug" "nun" "q-uiv-iu-t"_

_ 6 Her inflection of voice changed as she said this, much as Captain Widdershin's does in one scene of the Grim Grotto, if you have heard the audio books. In Voldemort's reply, he makes a malapropism. He means "masochist", only he really means "sadist" because he's thinking of her inflicting pain on others._

_*unlike some other much coveted sock yarns._

_A/N: Obviously, Draco is talking like Gollum.-Inappropriate deployment of thesauri is a somewhat re-occuring theme in this fic.-One of the barracuda's comments is noteworthy expressly because one would look for aldehydes in cinnamon and polymers in teflon, not vice verse, which is how it says it.-If you didn't know it, the song here is a parody of the song about Lancelot in the musical_Spamalot_.-Yes, the socks referred to in footnote #2 are the ones that would later be featured in "Orange"_

"SILIVREN PENNA MIRIEL—I CANNOT HEAR YOU, GALADHREMMIN ENNORATH—GO AWAY AND TAKE YOUR BATH! A ELBERETH GITHONIAL—I'VE FORGOTTEN THE REST OF THE WORDS!" Snape trailed off and then noticed that no one else was singing. He blushed.

Voldemort stamped his foot in a manner that was rather petulant, and it made an odd squelchy noise. Harry noticed that he was wearing yellow rubber rain boots with what was seemingly supposed to be a painting of a yellow rubber duck, but was failing miserably if that was so. Then, the Ruler of Darkness®, Lord of Evil Curses™, He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named®, You-Know-WHO™, and so on began to sing. Curiously enough, he had a decent, if not overly spectacular voice. "The Phantom of the Op-er-a is there! Inside your mind... The Phantom of the Op-er-a is there, inside your mind. Sing once again with me, our strange duet! Sing for me my... er," he blinked a lot and thought intently for a moment "cushion." he finished weakly.

"Cussshion! You hid your heart in a cussshion?" Draco asked, exasperatedly, and still hissing his s's absurdly.

Someone replied "I've got my bar of dirth[7]!" To Harry's horror, it seemed to be himself. "HELP, Dumbledore! I'm being spoken through vicariously!"

"I want to hebetate[8] you!" McGonagall called manically.

"_He_" said Sirius "won't help you. He is evil that does not sleep with a pancake on its strawberry head." And then Harry's godfather added, as if hoping to cheer them up, "DOWN WITH CAPITALISTS!"

"And thus," Snape noted, arbitrarily, "is the importance of the proper use of commas in the English language exhibited."

"No, no," disagreed Voldemort, stomping his _other_ foot petulantly. "it is a case of the unwise use of modifier phrases. Hmm... I should trademark that. Mycroft's Patented Petulant Foot Stamp (™)."

"Mycroft?" Draco asked.

At the same time, Snape protested "It isn't patented—you said you were going to trademark it. But I'm sure even Moccasin socks would be more comfortable than those yellow boots—do you quite _have_ to have yellow boots? Alas, I'm blatantly looking for an excuse for moccasin socks."

"Why does sir need to justify socks? Does sir have a sock fetish?" Winky asked. Snape glared at her.

Voldemort pouted and broke out into over-dramatized tears. "Oh, yes, I need yellow rain boots. And... and... a blue coat... and... a... a purple violet cushion." He sobbed. His lips trembled.

"What's a violet cushion?" Winky asked.

Sirius's next statement was a non sequitur. "The brother of that capitalist dog detective, Lackey Samara or something like that. Anyway, BLODWIN CAPITALIST PIGS!"

A voice said "Stop it! Stop that! Stop that bloody singing!" but it wasn't anyone in the hallway, so they all looked around, up at the ceiling, for a few minutes.

_7 A sort of spoonerish-ism of Mary Lennox's "bit of earth" and Cap'n Jack Sparrow's "jar of dirt" _

_8 What I believe to be an obscure word. It means to make dull or obtuse._

_A/N:The strange words Snape sings? They come, but not precisely in that order, from an Elvish verse that I think evokes Elbereth. Sadly (or not?), I memorized this from an entry in the NetHack in-game encyclopedia on Elbereth. (engrave it on the floor.)-Please tell me you recognize the eponymous "Phantom of the Opera" song?-the cushion? Is from Poe's "velvet violet cushion, with the lamp light glowing o'er" in "The Raven"-As explained in the above "foot"note, bar of dirth references Mary Lennox's request to her Uncle Archibald Craven for "a bit of earth" and Cap'n Jack Sparrow's boast that "I've got a jar of dirt! I've got a jar of dirt! And guess what's inside it?", immortalized in a mildly amusing "I've Got a Jar of Dirt Remix" if you care to look that up on YouTube.-"He is evil that does not sleep with a pancake on its strawberry head"? Truth be told, I'm not entirely sure where the strawberries came from, although there is an amusing anecdote involving small children and whether they should obey a strawberry in one of Brian Jacques's Redwall books. I would guess either_Mariel_,_Salamandastron_, or one of the Cregga-at-Redwall books, my bets hedging on the former. The rest of the statement is an amalgam of the LOTR quote "One does not simply walk into Mordor, there is evil there that does not sleep", amusingly interred in an avatar where Mordor was replaced with the name of a very large and opinionating chain of superstores, and a friend's animated avatar, one phase of which said "...here is a picture of Snape with a pancake on his head." Yep.-Mycroft, if you weren't aware, is the brother of Sherlock Holmes. I don't know exactly why he got in this fic...-Mocassin Socks are an interesting pattern "unvented" by knitting luminary Elizabeth Zimmermann.-The clothing Voldy mentions? "Old Tom Bombadil is a merry fellow/[something]his coat is blue, and his boots are yellow". This will come up later in an explanation for something.-Sirius and Sherlock Holmes? What exactly the confused name Padfoot calls Holmes came from, I don't know. I think it could be an instance of obscure thesaurus-overuse...-The last quote before this intervention is a direct quote from_Spamalot_, wherein the prince's father tells him to "Stop it..."__  
_

"I," said Voldemort gravely, having suddenly stopped crying "am your father. How does one wax a ceiling?"

"Wax a ceiling?" asked Sirius. "I know how to wax poetical, how to wax indigent, how to wax ironical, how to wax barometrical, but not how to wax ceiling."

"What!" Harry asked, indignantly but not indigently because James and Lily had been careful to leave their son a lot of money, or maybe they didn't and their money just defaulted to him because they didn't realize they were going to get killed by Voldemort and so didn't make a will.

"Really, I'm sorry if you think that's an essential skill." Sirius apologized and then pointed out "But I'm afraid that I really shouldn't do such a thing because it would put more money in the pockets of the filthy bourgeoisie and thus defeat all the stuff I've worked for. But I could wax barometrical or start a Communist rally or revolution if you like, Harry."

"The question is, Black" Snape asked coldly, "whether you can wax as mercurial as our epitome of the quote-un-quote common man over there." He jerked his thumb toward Voldemort.

"No, I mean, what did you just say, uh ...person-who-shouldn't-be named? about being my father?" Harry asked.

"That isn't trademarked." Voldemort noted, and continued looking up at the ceiling.

"Oh, well, you see, Harry, you're actually my love child with Voldie dearest." Professor McGonagall replied, and began to stroke Voldemort's chin. She then said, rather pointlessly, "I don't have a beard."

"Do you vant a beard?" queried Draco, who seemed to have acquired vampire fangs and a German accent since his last statement.

"Woman, the name is Voldemort!" Voldemort exclaimed and kissed Professor McGonagall dutifully but rather disinterestedly on the eyebrow.

"What does it mean?" Snape asked.

"Vhat does vhat mean?" Draco questioned, looking at the fish-bird.

The barracuda puffed itself up importantly from its perch on Draco's tummy, trying to look as official as possible. "Seaweed is an important fizz of the Hellenic Age, did you know that? It made their crochet hooks go 'boom-wah-wah-fall-down!' Oh, and it was covered in glue."

"The name." Snape explained.

Another disembodied voice commented "What am I, chopped liver?" There was a sound of canned laughter. Everyone looked rather confused.

"Iiiiitttt'ssss Mountie Python!" Draco announced in an announcer's drawn out voice, and then covered his mouth in embarrassment, but caught up one of the fish-bird's tentacles with his hand and nearly gagged at the discovery that it was holding a possibly dead, alive, or blue mouse.

"Mountie Python? Never heard of that species, my lad." Voldemort said, still enduring Minerva McGonagall's caresses and gazing at the ceiling.

"Is that a Canadian policitical variety of programming language, or an orographical error in the name of a British comedy troupe?" asked the barracuda, making half-sense for once.

"Is there such a word as pseudo-semi-psycho-auto-biographical, meaning that which resembles partly psychologically analyzed writing about one's own life?" asked Draco, ignorant of his accent for once.

Sirius whispered in a loud stage whisper to Harry, "That's a _rhetorical_ question, Harry!"

Harry finally overcame his wariness of speaking. "But then why did you try to kill me, and keep trying to do it, and why is there all this fuss about me being the one with the power to vanquish the dark lord, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month died? I mean, if we're actually... related—" he had particular difficulty getting that word out "—how can one of us die at the hand of the other since neither live while the other survives while we are biologically linked?"

Voldemort raised his eyebrows.

Minerva McGonagall dismissed his claims airily. "No, no, no! That's Neville Longbottom. You're mistaken."

"I mean," Snape continued, as if nobody else had spoken, "if it's v-o-l-period de mort, it quite probably means volume of death, but what's that supposed to mean?

"It's an anagram." said Voldemort, still staring at the ceiling. He began to hum a lively tune, which seemed to make Professor McGonagall mad.

"But it doesn't make any sense! I mean, Aspen Royal makes sense." Snape put in.

"So he does." agreed Voldemort dully.

"No, I _mean_ the phrase 'Aspen Royal'." Snape corrected.

"Doesn't." said Voldemort and slapped airily several times at Snape's head, which caused the potions professor to drop his book and attempt to shoo the Dark Lord's hand away.

"Doesn't what?" Snape asked, and then noted, "You made me drop my Cat Bordhi book."

"Your what book?" Harry asked. He had no idea what a Cat Bordhi was, nor why Snape was carrying a book related to it.

"Royal isn't an anagram, and _you_ aren't a tree." Voldemort resumed humming and began to mess with Snape's hair, as if he were toying with the idea of tying the potions master's hair into a bun like Minerva McGonagall's.

Snape, for some reason, slapped himself on the right ear, and then bent over and picked up his book.

"You've been a very naughty man, Severus Septimus Snape!" Minerva McGonagall cried. "_Eroica!"_

An ill-made plaster bust of a certain French dictator wearing a wig that seemed to belong to one of his more monarchical predecessors landed in Snape's arms, and it seemed to be quite heavy.

"Well?" Voldemort asked, messily pinning a small section of hair loosely to the top of Snape's head and then removing his hands from the other man's hair.

Snape closed his eyes in dread and dropped the book again. "It's Iranthus." he said in a small voice.

"What!" Voldemort demanded smartly. "I thought there was a meringue inside of it. Or a verruca. Or a salami. Or maybe a vial of, eh," he looked thoughtfully at the ground for a moment—"spelt? But then maybe we picked the wrong one, even if we do have a, er... 14.28571% chance of picking the right one?"

Snape stared at him in bewilderment. "Why would there be either a dessert made from sweetened, beaten, and baked egg whites, a wart, a spiced sort of sausage, or a vial of a sort of grain inside a be-peruked bust of Napoleon Bonaparte?"

"Oh, sorry." Voldemort apologized and explained further with appropriate gesticulation, "I do suppose that you can't expect to find some sort of treasure in every bust of Napoleon anymore than one expects to extract a feasting wound from a goose."

Snape raised his eyebrows. "Do you perhaps mean 'festering'?"

Voldemort slowly turned his head and nodded. "Yes, old chap, yes, I believe I do." His eyes were crinkled in thought.

_A/N: To begin with, I cannot honestly say that that quote is actually a tribute to_Star Wars_. (I'm more of a Trekkie...but I didn't even get into that until after this fic was written.) But it is, really. Because even someone like me who has seen about five minutes of Star Wars in their life knows "Luke, I am your father!"- There will also be quite a few references to Lewis Carroll. Talk of waxing the ceiling is derived from an anecdote revolving around an error I once made in quoting "The Walrus and the Carpenter": "The time has come to talk/to talk of many things/of shoes and ships and_**_sailing\sealing\ceiling_******_wax/of cabbages and kings/of why the sea is boiling hot/and whether pigs have wings" It should be_**_sealing_**_ wax. Pun. Did I mention, though, that Cincinnati, the nearest metropolis, is associated with Flying (and thus winged) Pigs?-indignant/indigent: in which I played off my own typo. Carry on. Indignation refers to a state of outrage, indigence to a state of poverty.-Merely for informational purposes, the barracuda's speech is meaningless. The disembodied voice, however, is, once more, from_Spamalot_, and then we talk briefly of Monty Python, in confused form. There is indeed a programming language named Python after MP, and surely you've heard of Mounties-the Canadian Mounted Police?-Draco's question is about a very long word which doesn't quite exist. You almost didn't get to enjoy it, as it was cut out by ffnet, but I hope my hyphenation saved it.-Aspen Royal? Is a handschuhmaus pseudonym for Snape, Aspen being an anagram, and Royal a reference to his being the Half Blood Prince. Curiously enough, though mine isn't an anagram of anything, I have elsewhere on the net used a pseudonym beginning with "A" and my name starts with "S"-Cat Bordhi is an extremely innovative designer of socks and other knitware. The book Snape has is "New Pathways for Sock Knitters, Book 1"-Eroica is a Beethoven piece that was originally dedicated to Napoleon, but the composer became disillusioned with Bonaparte. Alas, I neither remember the exact details, nor do I feel like rehashing them here in what is already very long.-Sherlock Holmes has cases involving someone destroying busts of Napoleon, and a carbuncle (which is both wound and (not joule) jewel) being retrieved from a goose. Verruca has something to do, definitely, with Roald Dahl, and is indeed a type of wart.-Iranthus is Snape's middle name in my fanon, which I mention only because the statement might be otherwise baffling. _

The fish-bird-barracuda gave a muffled cry of alarm and everyone turned in the direction it was facing. Professor McGonagall stepped on the hem of Voldemort's robe, and there was a ripping noise. He began to kick aimlessly and nearly lost his balance. Then, the group was pelted with a barrage of baked potatoes and rhubarb.

Draco opened his mouth to say something, but a potato fell into it.

Snape held up his hand, and the potatoes stopped in mid-air. One by one they began to fall to the ground and splatter open. Voldemort, rather alarmingly, threw his arms around the shoulders of the potions master in a big hug. Snape dropped the plaster bust in surprise—it didn't help that he was already attempting to balance it on one hand and clutch with his arm the slippery book.

The fish-bird-barracuda flapped its wings and screamed in a shrill voice "Maharajah! Maharajah! Maharajah!" saying it very fast and not bothering to put the proper accents on the syllables at all.

Snape gritted his teeth. A large cloud of plaster dust floated up in quite the same mushroom shape as the cloud of an atomic bomb, but, oddly enough, the bust wasn't harmed—on the contrary, in fact—it had taken up a lively pursuit of Minerva McGonagall and was somehow managing to jab her with a fork and poke her with a miniature model of a Greek temple to the goddess Artemis.

Voldemort took his wand in his left hand and waved it and his whole left arm somewhat clumsily at Minerva McGonagall, while still having his right arm across Snape's shoulders, leaning against the other man, and standing on one foot. Professor McGonagall was suddenly draped in a giant cobweb, which somehow prevented the bust from attacking her.

She seemed quite excited by this prospect of not being attacked by the bust and made her way across the room. Then she extended her arms, as if to hug Voldemort. "You're sticky, my dear." Voldemort objected and raised his eyebrow.

"Could you please stop clinging to me, whatever-you-want-me-to-call-you? Merlin's beard, I'm not your mother!" Snape exclaimed

Draco spat out the potato, making a noise which alerted everyone to his presence. Then they heard weeping again. "I don't have a mother! I don't have a mother! I don't even have any family! Don't mention her!"

"Well, really, I don't make a good proxy mother. For one thing, I'm a man, and I'm also _younger_ than you." Snape protested.

"Bah! Humdinger!" exclaimed Voldemort sadly. He then began to whistle and stop crying.

The self-titled barracuda began to sing. It didn't have a very good voice—it was a very nasal voice, very high, reedy, and at the same time sounded like a squeaky door. "Never look on the bight side of life." Then it attempted to tap dance, but it was standing on top of Draco, who was still lying in several inches of water (don't tell me you've forgotten that there's water on the floor!) and it didn't really have appropriate appendages for tap dancing.

"Now, look what you've done!" Draco exclaimed in fury. "My new robes are all wet!"

"Oh, well. Learn to live like the portal-tarot, Draco." Sirius called, and held up his fist, bristling with various types of needles stuck between his knuckles. "I've decided to try some sort of Muggle drug, so I've obtained some needles." He then began to poke inefficiently at his right bicep with the variety of needles. "Ouch."

"More like you're going to try your hand at masochism." Snape grumbled, and began to pull at something in his sleeve. Out came a red length of handkerchief which merged into a blue stripe, which merged into a white stripe, which merged into a black stripe, which merged into a red stripe, which was followed by a golden stripe, which was further followed by stripes of red, white, green, yellow, green, red, and then a sort of disc colored forest green. Angrily, Snape flung the trick handkerchief to the ground, where it quickly began to absorb water. Then he fished in the wide sleeve and procured a misshapen tube that had four thin pointed rods at the top and a fifth skewered into it. He proceeded to jam the rounded disc into a pocket in his robe and remove the fifth needle (for they _were_ knitting needles) from its position. Leaning against a protruding archway, he peevishly shoved it into a stitch and began to knit.

Voldemort and Harry both stared at Snape, though Voldemort was studying more intensely what the potions master was doing. Professor McGonagall was clinging to Voldemort and staring puzzledly at Sirius, who was still poking at himself with the assortment of needles. Draco was slowly starting to rise from the puddle or pond or water or whatever you care to call it.

"I find that there is something I must tell you, Severus." Voldemort began, but the barracuda interrupted.

"I must inquire, in good nature, as to what exactly you are trying to do there, sir." said the barracuda, addressing Sirius. "Because, I mean, it simply isn't perfectly defensible and fain to poke yourself."

"Oh, female ewer!" muttered Draco, as Snape, still peevishly knitting, started to say something.

"'_Female ewer'_?" Harry inquired.

"Well, yes, I mean, there are ladies around, even if McGonagall did conjure this annoying bird-chicken-fish-barracuda-cephalopod object." Draco said, giving a mighty shove at the aforementioned object.

"But whatever do you mean, Malfoy?" Harry asked.

"Really, Severus!" Voldemort exclaimed, and plucked something from the knitting. Snape raised his eyebrows and then proceeded to turn his knitting around.

"Oh." he said, and then began to knit backward, rather slowly, or at least that's what Harry thought he was doing.

"Well..." Draco began after a long pause, and then whispered his next word "manure."

"What about it?" Snape queried, as he began to knit forward again.

"Isn't it a bad word or something like that?" Draco queried.

"What's manure?" Sirius asked, and threw the needles in the air. "Oooh!" he exclaimed off-handedly. "I scored! _Down_ with you capitalist dogs!"

"No," corrected Snape, "You tossed a set of five two-aught dpns at us, along with an assortment of sewing needles and several steel crochet hooks. I believe this—" he extracted one of the pins from where it had fallen into his disc-ish thing of yarn, "—is an 11/80 machine needle, and this is a between."

"Between what?" Harry couldn't help asking.

"A between needle. It is quite short and thin, with a small eye, ergo it is a between. Does that answer your question, Potter?" he finished nastily.

_A/N: "Maharajah!" would not be in this fic, even mispronounced, if it weren't for Francis Hodgson Burnett, and possibly a slight dose of Kipling. It was here pronounced with the same cadence as "penultimate" might be. (that was the first word I thought of for a match. Lemony Snicket.)-"Bah! Humdinger!"? "Bah! Humbug!"/"Christmas a Humbug?" (Dickens.)-The barracuda begins to make malapropisms rather than spout nonsense hereabouts, and its song is based off "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"-I actually forgot that I had introduced flood conditions at the beginning of the fic. Projecting on to you, dear reader! 'Tis a joy.-The manure episode? Kind of inexplicable. (It will reach its glad conclusion after this author's note.)-Yes, the items Snape mentions are real crafting utensils. Addendum: Athena is the Greek equivalent of Minerva...and for reasons I can't quite explain, she's linked with Artemis in my mind, especially in HP fanon. (loong story)_

"Do you think it works in reverse?" Voldemort inquired thoughtfully. Then, looking closely at the item Snape was knitting, he asked, "Might I try?"

"Er, well, I suppose so," Snape replied, flustered. He then handed Voldemort the knitting. The Dark Lord pulled out a needle and stuck it awkwardly into the knitting. Then, he screamed.

"AAAAAAAHHH!" It was a very girlish scream, and its general effect was not helped by Professor McGonagall's yanking off Voldemort's robes, only because of his holding the knitting she wasn't able to remove them entirely. He wasn't wearing a shirt—well, no, actually, it seemed to be kind of attached to his robes, though luckily he was indeed wearing a thin pair of pants underneath, so that he was standing in front of them half-naked. McGonagall poked him in the side for some reason.

"What _did _you do that for?" Voldemort asked angrily. "I just ruined Severus's knitting, and you pulled off my clothes. It's chilly in here, and I'm cold, and I shouldn't have—but maybe I ought to laugh about it since I _am_ Voldemort. Only, that wouldn't be very helpful to Severus, after I ruined the poor man's knitting." By this time, Voldemort had settled into a sort of ponderous sadness, but Snape was gritting his teeth and staring at a point in the rafters.

"Oy vey! Look, you didn't ruin it—if you return it to me, I can fix it within five, maybe ten minutes. Next time just watch what you're doing. Would you please stop acting so childish?" Snape burst out.

"Am I?" Voldemort inquired in earnest repentance, and then changed to his thoughtful mood. "Would you—No, I don't suppose so—L-L-L-L-L-L. Six Ls."

The potions master, who had by this time fixed his knitting, plucked the fifth needle from its position in the tube and then offered it to Voldemort again.

"Oh. Thank you." Voldemort replied, and took the knitting. Realizing that he needed to do something about the robes, he let them fall off his right hand. Snape leaned back against the wall.

"Well, isn't _it_ a bad word?" Draco asked, and shoved at the bird-cum-fish-cum-barracuda.

"No, but it's synonymous with the true meaning of a bad word, Draco. I don't see why you didn't know that. Not that you would want to bring up manure at a Malfoy dinner party, but surely you would—or at least you _ought_ to—know that it's merely a coarse topic, not a vulgar one." Snape said, looking at the rafters.

"Hello there!" someone said in a rather squeaky voice. Harry turned to see Dumbledore standing there with a huge grin on his face.

"What" said Voldemort with gritted teeth "are you grinning like that for?

"This is delicious" Professor McGonagall commented, apropos of nothing. It seemed she was eating a map of Africa, which she had clearly conjured out of thin air.

"What were you saying?" Snape asked Voldemort thoughtfully.

"Oh, nothing, nothing at all," Voldemort replied sarcastically, dangling the knitting from his hand into Snape's, having finished a stitch. Slyly, he added "Tinkerbell."

"_Tinkerbell_?" inquired Snape with a look on his face that would have pulverized butter. He took the knitting.

"Yes, yes," said Voldemort, squeaking his boot on the floor and making quite an annoying noise. "Nice anagram, don't you think?"

"Of what?" asked Snape, poking his needle into a stitch quite vengefully. Draco looked thoughtfully at the potions master's knitting.

"Are you" began Draco and then trailed off, staring at the barracuda.

"Yar-har-har." said the barracuda helpfully.

"It's a steer deer!" shrieked Sirius, leaping frightfully into the air.

Minerva McGonagall began to yank at her bun and hop about, splashing everyone with water. "Are you yahag oo murder oor gahtang?" Draco asked and then directed a pointed glare at McGonagall.

_A/N: Sad admission: I don't remember AT ALL why Voldemort was counting L's or what he wanted to work in reverse. I haven't remembered since perhaps a month after I wrote that part, and upon returning to the story, it was a cause for great sadness and frustration. Oh well.-Tink is actually "knit" backward, and is knitting slang for undoing work stitch-by-stitch.-This should have been explained in the previous note, but what Voldemort was pointing out to Snape was that (like myself, working on the socks that I wrote in for Snape...which got lost before completion) he had skipped a needle. How can I explain this to non-knitters? Erm... if you were braiding and somehow managed to omit one strand (let's say you were braiding with four strands in the first place), you would have a long loose strand of string/hair/whatnot. This is not in fact a very good analogy, but it bears some visual similarity... or... let's say you're coiling up...a vacuum cleaner cord which goes through several clamps each round, and you miss one. There's a loose bit. It can happen in knitting.-I don't quite remember what Sirius meant by that, but Draco attempted to ask, as will be later correctly repeated, "Are you trying to murder your knitting?"_

"Oh! Master needs something to eat." said Dumbledore, causing the three grown men to direct a puzzled look at him. Harry would have, but he was already looking at Dumbledore.

Spluttering, Draco sat up, dripping wet, and flung water from the tips of his fingers at McGonagall. "Are you trying to murder your knitting?" he asked Snape inquiringly.

The Potions Professor began to say something, but declined in favor of Voldemort when they both started speaking at the same time. "As much as I hate to admit it, you're making me hungry, Minerva."

"Yay! Yay! Whoo-hoo! Broken-powwow!"[9] yelled the Head of Gryffindor house and began to do that dance where you pretend you're snorkeling or something, by holding your nose and holding out one hand and lowering yourself to the floor slowly and warily.

"MAAAAHHHHHHH!" This sad, mournful, sheep-like and loud noise came from the barracuda, who seemed to be disappointed that no one had appreciated its last contribution to the conversation. However, everyone tried their best to ignore it in favor of watching Dumbledore.

The aforementioned former headmaster was waddling over to Winky, but every time he lifted a foot off the ground, his beard flickered to look like Albert Einstein's hair upside down. When he finally reached Winky, he began to fervently talk to her in a series of beeps and squeaks. Winky squawked and ran off, carrying Snape's "Cat Bordhi" book.

"Hey! _Accio NPfSK!"_ called Snape angrily. Along with the book, a very large silvery disc that looked vaguely as if it were supposedly a coin came hurtling along the hallway trailed by two limp papers with large globular pictures on them.

"N." said Voldemort as he stared at one of the papers and pivoted his head to look at it sideways. At long last, he turned to Snape and said "Do you think it might be edible?"

Snape for this time, having retrieved his book while still holding his knitting, had been staring at the coin and muttering "Phoenix, Dutch sand" under his breath. Slowly turning to Voldemort he replied, "Unless you really believe Minerva...?"

Professor McGonagall stopped dancing and strode straight up to Snape. She proceeded to shake the first two fingers of her left hand, extended in a peace sign, in his face, stick her face up in his, and then lick the tip of his nose. Snape, needless to say, closed his eyes. Then McGonagall bent her knees while still somehow managing to get a lick of woolen robe and jumped off the ground. She took flight and began to act as if she were swimming in midair.

"Miner-va!" sang Voldemort "Come down from there!"

The barracuda, noticing that it was being ignored, emitted a sound like microphone feedback, and everyone but McGonagall, who was up in the air (of course), covered his ears. Another female strode into the room. Harry stared.

This woman has short, spiky pink hair and her ears were covered in silver stud earrings. She was wearing a long nightshirt with a large erroneously (someone must have thought flamingos were actually magenta colored) coloured flamingo displayed on its front. The ends of the sleeves and the neck were decorated with very precise prints of pecan nuts within their shells. Written across the flamingo's feet was the word "guillotine".

"Hey!" the newcomer announced and then cleared her throat "Methinks that the chandelier may hit y'all. O, dang it!"

"What does that thing eat?" asked the barracuda distrustfully.

"Who, me?" asked the newcomer.

"She's right!" yelled Draco. "There's a chandelier falling from the ceiling."

"_Arresto, presto, Momentum!"_ said Sirius, accenting each word with a Broadway type flourish.

The word flourish, printed in large clear type, appeared, floating in midair and having its f and l rather bisected by the giant coin. "What's flour-ish?" inquired the barracuda.

Professor McGonagall swooped suddenly down then back up, then down again, as if she were on a yo-yo. The falling chandelier suddenly disappeared and she apparated onto Dumbledore's back. He fell over and began to cry.

"Don't crush a poor house elf, mistress." he said, accenting every syllable with a sob.

"_House elf_?" Voldemort queried in pure disbelief and promptly began to dance a jig and snap his fingers while humming a piece that Snape recognized for some reason as Mozart's fortieth symphony.

Cognizant of the fact that once more no one was paying any attention to it, the barracuda began to take deep breaths.

"Who's hyperventilating?" asked the newcomer.

"It's Nymphadora Tonksy!" announced Sirius, gesticulating frantically at her.

The barracuda swelled to the size of a telephone before splaying its tentacles/limbs and undergoing an effect much as if someone had been blowing up a barracuda-thing balloon and had let go of it without tying the neck. It dropped the blue mouse.

"No," replied Snape with utter seriousness as he walked toward McGonagall and Dumbledore, "I am not trying to murder my knitting." Gingerly (and quite understandably), trying not to touch her, he pulled Minerva off Dumbledore and yanked the ex-headmaster up off the wet floor.

As the barracuda rose in the air, the water level on the floor went down and when it landed a mere 47 seconds later it was noticeably deflated and the floor was almost completely dry.

Harry poked a bit at the giant coin and was astonished to find that his finger went straight through it. "What sort of thing is this, anyway, Professor? You said something about phoenix."

"He-whom-we-shall-not-name is here. Do _not_ discuss matters of the Order of the Phoenix. There is evil in there which can't sleep. Don't meddle in the affairs of Death Eaters; they're seasonable and quick to venom.[10]" McGonagall said intensely, poking her finger up in his face. After saying this, she ran a finger through his hair as if it were a bowl of cake batter and tasted her finger. "Mmmm." she said "could use a bit more basil", pronouncing the name rather than the herb.

Harry stared in horror at her. "I thought," he said slowly and quietly, "that you said that Voldemort was my father."

"Don't name him. It's nearly as bad as Augustus-the-second-Kaiser-roll-of-Romania Bruce-hero-of-Scotland-land-above-England McGonagall[11]." complained McGonagall, pulling a leaf of spinach out of a wall hanging and then leaning on the large FLOURISH to contemplate her leafy green.

"Nooooo." remarked Voldemort, rubbing his boot contemplatively across the floor and making a disruptive squeaking noise. "he was saying something about Germany, but I haven't the heart to tell him he was pronouncing it wrong."

"It says," replied Snape, who _had_ heard them, " 'Pfennig' 'Deutschland' 'rot' which I think is a sort of German cent, the German word for Germany, and red."

"_And red_?" asked Tonks questioningly. "Why's that in the list?"

"_Rot_" said Snape, "means red in German. I don't know why it is on the coin. Maybe it has something to do with communists."

"But it isn't a coin." said Voldemort and threw his arms around Snape in a big hug. "I reallly" he continued, confusingly due to the fact that he was trilling his l's and was muffled by a bunch of woolen robes and Severus Snape, "don't want to hug you to death."[12]

Snape was clearly flabbergasted by this statement, as he held up his arms with his knitting clutched in his right hand and blinked quite a few more times than the going rate.

Draco, who had by this time risen, decided to poke Voldemort to attempt to get him off Snape. The blond boy withdrew a quill pen from his pocket only to find that it was attached with a little ball-link chain to a chain of items that included a house built of Muggle plastic toy construction brick and glued to a peacock feather, a sky blue colored plush penguin toy, a figurine of a leaping fish, a tattered and dog-eared instruction book that seemed to have lots of diagrams of fingers, and a laminated chart of permutations.

_9 She is trying, quite unsucessfully, for "Bow-chicka-wow-wow!"_

_10 "One does not simply walk into Mordor. There is evil there that *does not* sleep" and "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger"_

_11 Or "Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre" Note the double use of name as both speaking the name or ascribing it to someone._

_12 Under no condition do I write slash. Parody it, mayhap, but not here. Voldemort being so clingy is another mysterious element of this fanfic._

_A/N: Albus is a house elf! I'm not sure how I came up with that. Fun fact: Albus communicates with Winky with a series of beeps and squeaks. This is tribute to the newbie section of the Discworld MUD, wherein, if you undertake the Wizards mission, the wizard (I want to say it's an Alfred) will cast a spell involving beeping to allow you to see and retrieve his missing scroll. For some reason, the notion amused me.-As earlier explained, Snape's prized book is_**_N_**_ew_**_P_**_athways_**_f_**_or_**_S_**_ock_**_K_**_nitters, Book 1 (but the sequel is actually entitled "Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters", so, despite the fact that it was not, in fact, out when I wrote this story, there is no risk of confusion from merely referring to the initials) A comment, not included here, explains that the papers that appear are molecular or possibly atomic diagrams of the elements with the abbreviations N, P, S, and K (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Sulfur, Potassium) It was probably the "Pf" that brought on the intangible Pfennig.-The "foot"note does not entirely explain McGonagall's weird reference: she actually is referring, in an insane, obtuse way, to Augustus Caesar. ...However, the Latin pronunciation of Caesar is actually closer to "Kaiser": c's are hard in Latin, and "ae" actually sounds of _**_ai_**_sle(I'm just now taking Latin). Romania is just a mix-up. Robert of Bruce is a legendary Scottish hero, although it is only insanity that would induce Minerva to define Scotland as merely the land above England.-Draco's pocket collection: some of the items I don't recall the reference of. The house is build of Legos...I'm not sure why, though. The penguin is probably Tux, the Linux mascot, and the leaping fish probably has something to do with "So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish". The instruction book might be for sign language...or it equally well might be for some craft involving the hands extensively. I think the laminated chart of permutations might be a reference to a dream I had wherein my class was quizzed on permutations._

**_This is part 1. There will be a second part, which is roughly the same length as this portion but is not yet annotated, so it may get longer. Like most Terry Pratchett novels (though this is the only aspect in which they are comparable), this piece of writing has no good chapter breaks and so was broken off randomly. Unlike most Pratchett novels, this has no clever plot and not particularly charming characters. I hope you enjoy while I work on getting the second part (which doesn't, as such, provide a closing to the story, either) annotated._**


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